It’s 9:30am and whatever else happens on this Thursday in June, my day is already complete because I went for a walk. Third morning in a row, a block further each time, go me. Everything else this week is gravy because the walking is my only solid commitment. Next week we’ll add things like projects, writing, and interacting with the world and see how that goes.
In the ongoing quiet it’s been all about the thinking this week here in my ivory tower, not always a positive trend. I appreciate when someone says with a meme what I haven’t managed to suss out in hours at the keyboard, so here’s a little batch of truth I’ve gathered for us over the past couple of weeks:
It starts here, and if you know, you know…
Sucks to be a witch.
And leads here…
And disappoint you will, because feelers can’t follow the rulz.
Here’s a clue for when you find yourself wondering WTF…
Don’t be a patsy to their mindset.
We all fall prey at some point, so fix it and go on.
Events this week have demonstrated that chaos is loose in the world in ways we’ve never witnessed until now. It’s a challenge to stay positive and to believe that it will all get better, if never the same again. It would be a grace not to care, not to have a stake in any of it, not to cry over the brokenness everywhere. However…
**
It’s Thursday, which in #lfk starts the weekend. Finish strong and never let the misbegotten wear you down.
Once again nature has proven to us that Google notwithstanding, we know nothing. We read up on the facts while we prepared to be doting grandparents, only to find that isn’t how things really work in DoveLand. They know what they’re doing, it’s all written into their DNA, and our sporadic observation of their habits does not reveal to us the secrets. We’d hoped to see the chicks’ first flights, but David and Darleen very efficiently wrapped up the training course, possibly under cover of darkness, and the kids are gone, just like that. Yesterday morning when I went spying, Derek and Diane had moved to the east edge of the balcony, still under the ferns but positioned for escape, and their bright eyes and shiny feathers, freed from all the downy fluff, told me they were ready. When I saw this morning that the nest was empty it was no surprise, but a bit of melancholy set in since they left without saying goodbye.
Not to worry, Dave and Dar are already giddily at work on a new nest in the other planter where the ferns are thicker and taller, thus providing greater comfort and security than did their starter home. We hope this will become a tradition, so next spring’s plantings will be timed to encourage exactly that.
Having birds on the balcony, as opposed to bats in the belfry, is teaching me a few sweet lessons while plowing up my heart a little, as is required from time to time. Maybe the best reminder has been that life goes on, so go WITH it. Thank you, David, Darleen, and progeny for your patience and presence.
**
**
After being angels for weeks, today’s Mickey D’s run will be just what the doctor ordered. Love happens in every flavor, especially cheese and chocolate.
It’s Thursday, and you know what that means… HOW IS THE WEEKEND HERE AGAIN ALREADY??? Bizarre, but enjoy every minute of it.
It’s past 9am and the streetlights are still on, best kind of morning . Rainy, drippy, dark, leading one to think the day holds nothing pressing so why hurry? The coffee too is dark and deep, breakfast was glad-making for the tummy, and Kim’s at home, ensconced at his computer, having declined to make the trek out west for PickleBall this morning. We have a couple of projects that might keep us occupied today every bit as much as we want to be, the kitchen’s fully supplied with foodstuffs, and there’s no chance of flooding between here and the liquor store, so all is well. Oldies like their evening aperitif. The Royals, who’ve had a good run lately, play again after lunch today unless it’s raining in Kansas City at game time, so that sounds cozy. And in case you thought I meant THOSE royals… nah, can’t get into it, it’s all kinda silly. “My blood’s bluer and far more inbred than yours, so I win.”
By choice I’ve had lots of at-home hours over the past couple of weeks, which sometimes affords too much time for overthinking, which leads to remembering stuff, which leads to all the feelings. Society continues to be ridiculous and the shenanigans can get to a person, know what I’m saying? A lot of people I once counted on to be the adults in the room can’t get a handle on this era for what it is, which is incredibly depressing and distressing, so my aim every day is to stay juuuuust tuned out enough to avoid the sturm und drang of the labyrinth itself. Some days are more successful than others.
Have you thought about this… the thrill of aging almost inevitably means our core support group grows ever smaller through natural attrition of every sort, which leaves us more and more out here on our own. It’s a shocking realization at first, until you understand that the total independence and personal freedom you’ve always craved is HERE now, so do something smart with all that. Do what you want, say what you mean, what can happen, they take away your birthday? The older of my two grandmas, my dad’s mom, kept up a correspondence with cousins her age, eight 2nd-generation German-American women who maintained a “Round Robin” notebook filled with news, updates, and photos, sending it around until everyone had written in it, at which time they started it around again. She read pieces of it to me over the years until finally it was just her and one cousin left to communicate… and then just Grandma, who at past 95 was the last to leave. She told me she was never so lonely as during those years when there was no one left who remembered who she’d been before she was old.
My mom, on the other side of my genealogical chart, was the third-eldest of nine siblings, so I grew up as part of that big family, taking for granted it would always be there. Oh, my sweet summer child, your naiveté is endlessly touching. The world doesn’t stay static for a second and neither do people. Notwithstanding things like bloodlines, DNA, identification with a tribe, and backup in a fight, families don’t remain static either. They grow, they morph, they move, they move on. I’m now the second-oldest family member of my generation, and from this vantage point the terrain looks entirely different than I might have imagined when I was one of the littles. I look around at who’s still here and see an assortment of people I don’t know, never actually DID know except in the context of being related to each other and thus somehow extra-connected to each other’s well-being. Now we’re mostly strangers, which was always going to be the outcome if we ever started being ourselves with each other. And now we’ve done what we unconsciously do out there in the general population… we’ve mostly reduced each other to our politics and drawn lines of separation, a phenomenon maybe none of us intended. We always were a diverse bunch, but that knowledge was obscured by loyalties and what we knew at the time as love. Since we grew up and away as a family entity, reality has reigned more and more supreme, and that’s no doubt a good thing since sentimental delusions take us precisely no where good.
**
Life is simultaneously simpler and more complicated than we want it to be. A simple affirmation, or exhalation if you will, might go something like this:
I’m a breathing being on planet Earth, with the power to be kind and almost no other,
with especially no power to fix anyone but me.
My grandmas both lived past 95, a space of twenty years from where I am now. What will I do with those two decades should they be allotted to me?
**
A sweet thing happened this morning… I saw David returning to the nest so I went out onto the balcony. Darleen must have just left, as he was still standing on the railing, so I spoke to him in soft tones and he didn’t move a feather while I peered over his shoulder. I’m happy to tell you that there are indeed TWO eggs in their barebones little nest and all seems well, even as they take turns hunkering under the ferns while the rain falls. These Dove people are cool.
Tell me if this happens to you sometimes… it’s only 8am and I’m already through with today, what’s up with that? I dipped my toe in the news pool and instantly regretted it. I looked for humor on social media and found snark. I sat here too long and started remembering every stupid regrettable thing I’ve ever said or done, an endless parade of self-accusation, and it’s ridiculous.
Okay, false alarm… turns out I just needed to eat something. And thus am I reminded, again, that we can complicate life beyond all reason just by examining it to death.
**
We add difficulty to life by expecting it to conform to our plans and hopes, forgetting that it takes no notice of our existence at all. Plans? Hopes? Get real, little human, we’re rolling ON and you’re about to get flattened, better luck next round.
**
Here’s a thing to know: Returning to life after long absence is anything but seamless. There’s a lot of catching up to do, and you begin to realize how much has changed since your whole world went off the rails. There are days when it’s a lot, and others when I make it a mountain on my own. These are affirmations that are helpful to me:
**
I will always remember my mother-in-law, when I broached the subject of a move to the nursing home, pointing her finger and declaring adamantly “I need a MAN, RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW!” She knew that if my father-in-law or either of her two sons were still living she would have an advocate, but alas, here was her daughter-in-law of 35 years trying to tell her what to do. I understood her angst then and have experienced it many times for myself because we simply don’t tell life what’s going to happen. We persist in trying, but we eventually register the success rate and back off a little to keep our lack of power from becoming too overwhelming.
I do what I want. Right, life?
Turns out what I want to do today is to start getting a true handle on my closet-cleaning project. So far, there are a dozen empty tubs and containers stacked in a tower to show for my sorting and tossing, and I’m ready to add to that total. Kim found a perfect six-drawer chest that should go far in solving various “Where do I put THIS?” quandaries, thus letting me move forward. A goal. A purpose. My kingdom for a horse…
Yesterday I made a list of Anxiety Reducers which is now taped at the side of my monitor, and if followed it’s bound to help eventually:
Drink far less coffee
MOVE the body
Less alcohol, so, you know, 2 or 3 evening Tequila shots instead of 4
Cut obvious sugar
Cut the clutter, which resides mostly on my desk and in the ever-looming closet
Drink more water
Get outside
Spend a skosh less online time
Could work. Wish me luck. I hope the sun’s shining where you are as full-on as it is here, and I hope your Thursday will be all good stuff.
As usual, fickle spring can’t make up her mind, and she will have it her way regardless. It looks perfectly lovely outside but when I opened the balcony door after sunrise, I was instantly made aware of the real-feel temp. Doesn’t matter, it’s just weather and we haven’t a particle of power to change it day to day, which would be easier to take if we had even a smidgen of influence on the rest of life. It’s part of my job to warn you that the aging process inevitably brings loss in most every direction, and far sooner than we’re led to believe: loss of influence, loss of credibility, of independence, of energy, strength, and power, among other attributes we formerly took for granted. Sooner than we could possibly anticipate, we start to sense that we’re next-in-line for increased outside input concerning our well-being and security. Lord, I was just there with six older family members! Facts say it’s been more than twenty years since I played the caregiver role, but in my economy it was only yesterday… and although we’re not there yet, I can feel it creeping up to scope us out. Oh, the places we’ll go, the realizations we’ll make along the way. Life is… weird. And a little anticlimactic. Is this all there is? Send in the clowns…
In retrospect, 2022 was a daunting challenge every day, and 2023 isn’t proving to be very inventive on its own because it’s more of the same. A person could worry.
Nevertheless, we press on…
I know this much is true:
We’re all pedaling as fast as we can.
As soon as we know better, we try to do better.
My old-lady gripe is that life moves a pinch too fast from womb to tomb. It never slows for us, and by the time we figure a couple of things out we’re, as my grandma said, “too soon old, too late shmart.” Pisses me off, that sense of powerlessness. But as a Teutonic realist, I see the dilemma for what it is… life’s current and coming challenge is to hang in and get better because the alternative creates even more righteous rage within. And silent rage is treacherous because it’s a gateway drug to depression, which is the opposite of living. We don’t wanna go there.
A weekend state of mind settles down upon #lfk by 5pm on any given Thursday, providing a quasi-4-day chunk of R&R out of every seven. Something about bars, restaurants, sports, and living in a university town guarantees this laid-back state of mind and I take to it like a duck to water, if mostly as an observer.
It’s a happy week here, with our Jayhawk boys winning the basketball conference title for the 20th time in the league’s 24-year existence. Their statistics are off the charts this season, and it’s beyond fun to live in the midst of the celebration. FACT: Winning feels better than losing. My love of well-played sports puts a little wedge between me and a few of my friends, who find it at odds with my core pacifism, but there will be no justifications forthcoming – I’m that girl, and other people’s thoughts are none of my business.
**
Also this. Says the same thing as above, and covers all bases.
**
Speaking of bras, I’m pretty sure Oklahoma just banned Dolly Parton:
**
That’s your semi-regular load of random, boys and girls, do with it what you will, and make good stuff out of the weekend. Try to fare better than the Peeps – in which the key is “Don’t Be Fake.”
If you stop by and read me on any regular basis, you’re aware that my thoughts and words often focus on mortality. I would not, however, want there to be any misunderstanding about my trend in that direction, to wit: mortality and endings are the bailiwick of the Golden Age, and this girl simply prefers to know what she’s headed into, which ironically is yet another survival mechanism in operation. I hope to be fortunate enough to have inherited my grandmothers’ longevity, all of them seeing 95 or better, but it is not for me to know, nor do I really want to. Do you want to know the year of your demise? For my part, no thanks, it would color everything in different shades and ruin it all. I’m sorry, but if you read the ending of books before the beginning, we can’t be friends, get what I’m sayin’?
The alternative to morbid musings is to live ’til I die, in which case I intend to keep improving on my methods. Last year was full of heaviness and challenges, which has made it difficult to crawl out from under the pall, but dang, I am so ready to stop feeling whatever this is… and as I typed those words my brain said “It’s endings and beginnings, and you better deal, girlfriend, life is short.” The first step, for me… well, first step is always tears, whatever the situation. Second step is to decode the problem so I can break it down and handle it. Third step, cry some more. You know, the cycle of life. And because I need not only a vent-space but accountability, you get to eavesdrop on the process, and I hope it will prove helpful to you at some future date.
I’m ready for better, aren’t you?
**
Welp, here’s a welcome bit of news then…
And I’m expecting a huge back-rush of energy any moment now, so we’re good.
**
It’s called the Human Condition. Good luck getting out of it.
**
From my friend Phil…
I felt very seen by this, so I stole it. My sense of humor was inherited from crazy Germans and rough-edged Black Irish, and it is decidedly not for everyone. Do the looks I get do anything to stop me? Rarely. Because I had great role models.
**
**
**
Best coffee in town all up in here, made by Kim, so nobody has to suffer.He says the out-and-about coffee drinker looks like Jeff Lynne.
EDITED to say “Who IS this man I live with? He’d never seen any of the mashups, nor had I, but here ya’ go…
**
Sharing because it might be the most astounding thing I’ll read all day:
**
And finally, sharing because life and breath and love R us.
Our forecast was for overnight snow, but what we have is frozen fog on the streets and sidewalks, curtailing most outdoor activity until the sun arrives, which may not be anytime soon. Kim canceled his morning walk after skating to the trash building and back, and people are navigating our intersection at Granny speed. No walkers below my windows, which is slightly eery… but the mood all up in here is sanguine and patient, waiting for what will be. Kim’s making oatmeal to get us started, and as long as I fold and store a stack of laundry, and make it to a haircut after lunch, I will have justified my existence for another day. I half hope my hairdresser is staying tucked in today, as there’s hardly a safe surface for man nor beast. A friend posted this about the current situation at our hospital complex:
He added that there are slide-offs and vehicle pileups all over town. Our balcony is now strewn with what look like pellets of dry ice, the streets are slick with black ice, and today’s high temp will remain below freezing, so yeah, good day to hide by the fire if you have one.
**
If everything shuts down for the day, that leaves lots of time for thinking, likely the riskiest thing I engage in now. How many of us thought we’d either be a completed work by 75, or dead, and here I am still trying to know myself before the ride stops. Things happen for which I realize too late I’m woefully unprepared… but how can this be? I’ve been there done that, but the capacity to ignore reality persists. Observing my grandmothers, who all seemed sort of “old” by the time I was fully aware of them, led me to believe that after a certain age serenity sets in and nothing can ruffle all that accumulated knowledge and experience. Not so much, sorry to say. Here’s the piece that matters: We stay approximately the same age inside for our entire lives, merely adjusting to the times as we go along… or not.
Something I’m newly grateful for… after living here for almost ten years, I finally have my own personal care team in place and it’s making all the difference. Keri owns my hair, Jourdan keeps my piggies looking presentable, and Erica provides TLC for my achy body. Wonderful women who express themselves through giving. It matters.
And now last night’s snow has arrived and is falling thick and heavy. Kim delivered me to my haircut and back, across two city blocks and several feet of treacherous sidewalk, and we lived to tell about it. The fireplace will see us through. You stay safe, and enjoy what winter has to offer!
Three mornings from now it will be a new year. We make such a thing about restarts and clean slates that it tends to crank up the pressure right off the top, making the crispy-clean observance something less than joyful, so this time I’m proceeding on the basis that 2023 is NOBODY’S year, we’re all simply going to stroll nonchalantly to the door, peek through the peephole, open the barrier a crack, read the room, and hang around the coffee machine until the convo starts to sort itself out.
For me, 2023 says less is more. My plan, goal, thought, intent is that if and when the year 2024 shows its face, every drawer, shelf, cabinet, closet, space will have been scrutinized severely and lightened of its load. I feel guilty and heavy-laden if I’m harboring goods of the world for which I have no legit use, especially when I can envision others getting the benefit instead. Excess only adds to my anxiety, and one place that’s due for a purge is the desktop I’m typing on at the moment. Thousands of images, files, and folders must go in the name of mental health. It could happen… bit by bit, step by step.
Random thoughts and admonishments, curated to take us into the immediate future…
Alternatively, I might assign myself the task of adopting more freedom and flexibility.
Couldn’t find it on my bucket list when I went to cross it off, but I finally earned a decent shiner in my lifetime, and it was so easy to do! Almost made it home from my walk Monday afternoon when I stubbed my toe in the driveway to our building and went down. I don’t remember the fall, just the solid impact and the aftermath. Once my senses returned I was trying to see where all my stuff was… little shoulder bag with essentials, my glasses, my walking pole, the tiny hearing aid that flew across the pavement… when a svelte young businesswoman drove slowly out the drive, looking at me turtled up while deciding to do nothing. It felt precisely like somebody was looking but not seeing. I was a bug on the sidewalk. Fortunately, a woman likely in her 60s hopped out of her car and tried to help me get my feet under me. Due to my suddenly messed up right side we were having no success, when a man in his 50s strode over and carefully lifted me under my arms so I could stand up, gathered my detritus for me, and saw me to the door. Those two people have obviously lived long enough to know everybody’s gonna need a hand sometime, and they made all the difference. I actually feel kinda bad for that lovely young woman… Karma never forgets and this mama’s heart wonders what the cost might be. Oh well.
So yeah, that’s how that was. My cheek swelled about 3″ beyond its limits, with the outline of my ruined glasses showing like a roadmap, and now we get to marvel over the beautifully changing fall colors on this canvas of a face, starting with livid purple. It’s been necessary to show myself in medical offices, making sure everything still checks out, and I have a disclaimer: Be advised that if you indicate Kim and say “I’ll bet HE did that, right?” I will look you in the eye and ask why you’d say that. “Do you hit YOUR wife?” It strikes me as an old-white-man thing to say and I’ll call you out. An old white man with Dr. in front of his name asked me that question on Tuesday, but the right words hadn’t yet formed in my frontal cortex where expressive language resides. Come at me again, you old fart, with your not-humor, I’ve got your answer right here.
Here’s the truth: if you’re a woman and you ask me that same question you’ll do it tentatively, softly, with eyes downcast, and you either know me really well or not at all. If you know me enough to trust me, you’re asking for yourself, things have happened, and you need someone to tell. And you know Kim would never hit me, but you need an in. If you don’t actually know me, you don’t know my husband either or you’d have the answer already. If you’re a man and ask me, something in you is damn proud of him for supposedly asserting his rightful authority over a clearly insubordinate wife. I’m not having it, Mr. Cellophane, sit down. And don’t speak to me again without authorization.
Okay… all better now.
Anyway, if you’re either brave or a masochist, here’s what it looked like Tuesday morning:
By evening, gravity was carrying it all south down to my real wrinkles and I have a kind of wondrous scary pirate vibe going now. No more pics, and I know you’re thanking me. My medical-everything friend Regina told us to go to a Mexican grocery and get arnica gel for the bruises. She broke her orbital socket last summer so she knows… and she’s right. It works. Not fast enough that I won’t shock my hairdresser out of her boots today… but I can see a difference already.
I have a love/hate attitude toward the new boots I was wearing when I fell, but I’ll put something on and get back on the horse today, walking to my haircut and home again, before an excess of caution puts me back in my comfy chair to stay. Cannot, will not, have that.
You know why I write about getting older?
Barring circumstances, everyone goes there.
There’s no cure for it.
It gets realer and realer.
If I can scout ahead and warn you of some of the pitfalls, well… one is glad to be of service.
This is a part of life to be enjoyed, if possible, rather than discounted as “just getting old.”
Don’t fear life, it goes on. Never let the bastards wear you down, compadres. Your horse is waiting…
It’s another glorious fall morning in the heartland… cool temps, sunshine, the sounds of commerce humming along. Our first frost is apparently due next week, but benevolent nights would be a grace as far into the season as possible, as we currently have what I can only call a “situation.”
A few of us have been aware for a while of a night-sleeper in our parking lot, only gradually gathering details and pertinent facts. What’s been gleaned: Her pronouns are she/her and she’s possibly elderly. I’ve not encountered her up close and personal yet, but from my 4th-floor windows she resembles a mummy. She may be suffering from narcolepsy, causing her to drop in her tracks and sleep it off regardless of surroundings or conditions. Alcohol or drugs will do the same thing, of course, but who’s to say. Sometimes, sleeping on the raw pavement, she’s wrapped in a blanket, sometimes more exposed to the elements, but her situation always appears haphazard and dire. Our building guy has found her lying in the middle of driveways… stretched out across parking spaces… sprawled in the bank drive-through… and he always tries to urge her out of harm’s way, with little success. It feels like only a matter of time before someone fails to see her in the predawn gloom, or mistakes her for a discarded remnant, or the weather takes over… but you can’t force anyone to accept unwanted help. Lawrence has a homeless population of somewhere around 400, a certain percentage of whom won’t set foot inside a building of any kind lest they feel trapped, possibly tricked into losing their independence for something they didn’t want. I think the shelters have been running full… there are also tent communities here and there… and some people sleep rough every night, weather be damned, in any sheltered spot they can find.
This solitary stick of a woman must feel a safe vibe on our block and I’d like that to be true as she’s either a phantom or a visiting angel. Twice I’ve spotted her shrouded unmoving outline from my window, put my shoes on, grabbed a few resources for her… and when I checked again she was gone. The stock photo above? Imagine no shoes, no cardboard, and everything too road-worn and dirty for words. Neither you nor I can see ourselves in this situation… but I’m guessing neither could our lone camper nor her mama.
They asked her advice and then questioned her guidance,
They branded her loud, then were shocked by her silence,
When she shared no ambition they said it was sad,
So she told them her dreams and they said she was mad,
They told her they’d listen, then covered their ears,
And gave her a hug while they laughed at her fears,
And she listened to all of it thinking she should,
Be the girl they told her to be best as she could,
But one day she asked what was best for herself,
Instead of trying to please everyone else,
So she walked to the forest and stood with the trees,
She heard the wind whisper and dance with the leaves,
She spoke to the willow, the elm and the pine,
And she told them what she’d been told time after time,
She told them she felt she was never enough,
She was either too little or far far too much,
Too loud or too quiet, too fierce or too weak,
Too wise or too foolish, too bold or too meek,
Then she found a small clearing surrounded by firs,
And she stopped…and she heard what the trees said to her,
And she sat there for hours not wanting to leave,
For the forest said nothing, it just let her breathe.
Author: @Becky Helmsley
***
This breathtaking poem was shared on Facebook without accreditation, which google fixed for me, quickly finding Becky for the documentation she must have. The poem’s title is BREATHE. Reverse Image Search failed me utterly, however, so for now Tree Woman will remain anonymous.
***
The sweet discovery I made, three lines in, is that BREATHE is written in the same meter as Billy Joel’s “She’s Always a Woman to Me.” So yes… you can sing it! And if ever a poem needed to be sung… LOUD… it’s this one.
It might sound odd, but I miss you when I stay away for too long and fail to write down every thought in my head as OCD, ADHD, and anxiety demand. Beyond an incredibly faithful core of readers, I have no idea who sees my words… but there are days when I can feel benevolent forces just behind the wall… this wall I’m scribbling on now, defacing it with my own brand of graffiti… and I’m glad you’re there. Makes me wish for words of wisdom to impart, something that would make your day a little shinier, your heart a bit lighter. Alas, it turns out I’m here mostly to bitch and moan and call for backup, so may the gods bless your heart for sticking around.
This morning was undoubtedly one of the most perfect of my lifetime, and that’s saying a lot. The temp and humidity were just right and the sky was pure sunshine, a Chamber of Commerce kind of day. I walked to Einstein’s to get a bagel and coffee, then to a picnic table in South Park where I enjoyed a quiet breakfast while I read my book via phone and watched Larryville wake up. Not a leaf was stirring in the massive trees that must have already been standing when Quantrill and the Boys came through during the Civil War, trying to burn everything to a cinder.
There’s no way I could reach across this, let alone around its circumference. There be giants.
A couple of people wrapped in blankets on the hard floor of the gazebo were gradually letting the sun’s rays wake them up, and I hope someone provided coffee after they came to life.
***
As we inch our way toward the season of the long shadows, I’m storing sunshine and benevolent days… we’ll need every bit of it.
Kim Smith self-portrait, August 2022
***
I’ll leave you with this… and if you know the translation, please share it!
PLAYING FOR TIME claims no credit for any images posted on this site unless otherwise noted. Images on this blog are the property of their respective owners. If there is an image on this blog that belongs to you and you do not wish for it to appear on this site, please E-mail me with a link to said image and it will be promptly removed. Thank you.
Welcome to my weekly blog on life's happiness. We are all human and we all deserve to smile. Click a blog title or scroll down. Thanks for stopping by.
Creative humour, satire and other bad ideas by Ross Murray, an author living in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada. Is it truth or fiction? Only his hairdresser knows for sure.
Playing for Time 
Join the conversation …